12-17-2013, 08:59 AM | #181 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Stuttgart, Germany
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Re: Flat Black
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12-17-2013, 01:26 PM | #182 | |||
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Flat Black
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But it really doesn't matter, because of one of perhaps the most fundamental and surprising results in economics: Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage. Prices don't matter. Only price ratios matter. Tau Ceti is rich in capital and skilled labour, poor in land. Navabharata is the other way around. That means that the cost ratio between labour-intensive goods and capital-intensive goods is higher on Navabharata than on Tau Ceti. It is to the advantage of them on Tau Ceti to specialise in capital-intensive goods and swap them for land-intensive goods; it is to the advantage of them on Navabharata to specialise in land-intensive goods and swap them for capital-intensive goods. If both types of goods are worth a lot of silver on Navabharata and not worth many écu on Tau Ceti it doesn't matter; the exchange rate will adjust. If the productivity of both land and capital are higher on Tau Ceti, so that the Tau Cetians can grow drugs on less land as well as producing photonic computers with less plant that still doesn't matter. Navabharatans will swap more drugs for a computer than Tau Ceti can get by reallocating resources from computer production to drug production. The exchange rate will adjust to make what is profitable in real goods profitable in money. Quote:
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Remember that I have hundreds of under-developed dumps of planets in the setting, and that I need spaceship services to all of them. An overall structure of specialisation and trade works better for me than a special case to create trade (or other reasons for interstellar contact) on each colony. {I ought to mention at this point that there is one other source of foreign exchange with which to buy imports and motivate transport provision, besides trade. But it only works for places that are even worse than Navabharata. Charity. On planets where there is famine, disease, crop pest, adverse environmental change etc. the Empire (and other charities such as the Humanity League etc.) undertake large-scale charity mostly in the form of public works. They build irrigation systems and hospitals, set up systems of schools to teach basic agronomy and medicine, build harbors and railways and airports and cellular networks and marketplaces. To do that they buy a lot of land and material locally, hire a lot of workers. So they show up with hard currency (such as Imperial crowns), exchange it for the local valuta so as to pay wages and rents and buy land and materials. And that gives the locals hard currency to buy imports with (and it is typically no use to them for anything else). There's nothing of that sort going on on Navabharata on such a scale as to affect the structure of the economy. But on, say, Cassegrain — which has TL2 (early) industrial methods on a good day and where population exceeds carrying capacity — the Agricultural Service, the Public Health Service, the Public Education Service, the Terraformation Service, the Agricultural Service, and the Humanity League gush Imperial Crowns like geysers.}
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. Last edited by Agemegos; 12-17-2013 at 05:54 PM. |
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12-17-2013, 01:27 PM | #183 |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Flat Black
My apologies, especially to combatmedic.
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12-17-2013, 01:34 PM | #184 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Flat Black
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Bill Stoddard |
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12-17-2013, 01:41 PM | #185 |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Flat Black
David Ricardo was smarter than the average bear. I must see whether I can get a portrait of him.
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. |
12-17-2013, 02:15 PM | #186 | ||
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Ronneby, Sweden
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Re: Flat Black
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Which you described as: Quote:
Speaking of Australia, you could have a planet whose "export" is prison space. :) |
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12-17-2013, 03:09 PM | #187 | |||
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Flat Black
Yes. they have an effect. And if the transport costs are high and the differences in price ratios small they can make trade uneconomic. But surely you can see that the effect is not necessarily so large that trade in agricultural products is impossible. Trade costs in the real world are non-zero, yet we have and have long had worldwide trade in food and other agricultural products.
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The American South before the US Civil War supported a wealthy and highly-educated aristocracy on the labour of a much poorer unfree underclass by exporting cotton to England for manufacture and re-export around the world, in ships that were both slower and more expensive than 1890s steamers. Economically and even socially, Navabharata is a lot like the American Old South. There are probably even a lot of gods on Navabharata who believe in "king kevlar". Navabharata's place in the interstellar economy is a close parallel to a large number of historical examples in the world economy. If you're having trouble suspending disbelief in it I'm afraid that the problem is with your lack of knowledge of history and understanding of economics, not with my set-up of Navabharata. This is how trade actually works. Quote:
I can see several ways of doing it. First, if a colony had an open immigration policy other colonies might find it cheaper to ship their criminals there as exiles than lock them up. Imperial Spaceways would probably insist on such passengers travelling in hibersleep, because it wouldn't be keen on the security problems of having unwilling passengers, and its staff would jack up at being asked to serve as prison guards. Second, in a manner similar to the deportation of English criminals and Cornish and Irish rebels to the Americas between 1600 and 1775: a colony could impose an indenture on a convict as a criminal penalty, and assign the indenture to an agent on another colony where the law supported such transactions. The agent would sell the indenture when the convict arrived in hibersleep, and use the proceeds to defray the cost of passage. That the Empire would be perfectly fine with providing transportation in such a case is another example of it not being as moral as martinl would like. Third, a colony could supply, or countenance firms in its jurisdiction supplying, the services of a private prison, like many in the USA today. In this case, a colony where keeping prisoners was expensive might find it economical to ship them off-world to a place where accommodations, food, guards etc. are cheaper. On a long sentence the savings on prison costs might cover the transportation costs. After the Compromise of '84 I can see a consortium backed by the LRA buying the cheapest possible planet in the Beyond from Eichberger Realty and setting it up as a prison planet. Colonies all across the Empire would pay it to accept migrants such as it could not otherwise attract. And the "prisoners" could be used as a workforce and population for a new world, in which the entrepreneurs of the scheme could set up a political system such as could not attract voluntary immigrants. And after fifty years they get a seat in the Senate! It's not Navabharata, though.
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. Last edited by Agemegos; 12-17-2013 at 03:21 PM. |
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12-17-2013, 06:10 PM | #188 | |||||
Join Date: Jan 2006
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Re: Flat Black
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12-17-2013, 06:14 PM | #189 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Flat Black
Also they can just straight up import TL10 vessels if they need to. I don't think the equator is an impassible barrier, but it's probably an expensive one. Also during the Age of Piracy it was probably closer to being impassible for planet bound Navabharatans.
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12-17-2013, 06:54 PM | #190 | |||
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Flat Black
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flat black, planetary romance, sci-fi |
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